Even before eyebrows became this big trendy thing on every social media platform, I remember looking at my face and thinking: my eyebrows are SO not the same! I noticed every single curve of the hairs. I noticed how the left one was more arched than the right one. I was fixated on how one had thicker hairs and a cleaner arch than the other. At one point in eighth grade, I used to take my index fingers and place them at the ends of my eyebrows and try to measure if they were around the same length.
I was always too scared to pluck them because I thought I would mess them up more than I thought they were already, so sometimes I let them grow out. That led to me being even more uncomfortable because it changed the entire way my face looked.
The most frustrating part about all of this was that there was no solution. There was no way I could just look at my eyebrows and think, Oh they look great today! Because I noticed every single deformity; I noticed things no one else did.
I look at girls' photos on Instagram and makeup tutorials on YouTube and its just amazes me how fixated people are on making their eyebrows symmetric! There are so many products out there: from the powders to the brushes to the different types of tweezers. I get it, trust me I do. Eyebrows define your face. I totally understand. But I'm here to tell you all that even if your eyebrows don't have that perfect arch, or aren't super thick, its okay.
I'm not just talking about eyebrows, this mentality applies to literally anything else in your life. People always feel like they need to conform by looking and acting like the people they idolize or the people they follow on Instagram or in magazines. If that's who you feel you really are, go for it. Who am I to stand in your way? But then again... What's the fun in looking like everyone else? What's the point?
Think of it this way. The concept of beauty was created by someone way long ago, someone that isn't us. You don't need to be perfect because "perfection" is not a construct you have created yourself. Someone before you said, "This is what beauty is so all of you must believe that! NOW!" I'm sure they didn't say it exactly like that, but you get my point. We did believe whoever said it, though. We did then and we still do now. We've clung to these beliefs of what beauty is so intensely that we don't believe we are beautiful unless we meet those expectations entirely.
Believe me. Liking yourself, your quirks and all is probably one of the hardest things you'll have to do in your life. I'm still working on it, too. But you don't need to be like everyone else in order to be beautiful. Beauty is however you choose to define it.
When big eyebrows became a thing, I used to feel insecure because I thought my eyebrows looked as thin as worms. They weren't the same color as worms, but the size was definitely the same!
As the legendary Carrie Bradshaw once said, "The problem is not your thighs. The problem is your head." The problem isn't that your eyebrows aren't symmetric, the problem is in your mind.
Listen up.
No one's face is perfectly symmetric.
No one is perfect.
Those tiny little things that you beat yourself up over — you're the only person that sees them.
That's the trickiest part to realize and overcome. When I look in the mirror, the first thing I usually do is criticize the way my nose looks, or how purple my under bags are, or how my left eye is more angled than the right. I pick at the bad stuff first because it's easier. But the truth is, no one sees that my right nostril is higher up than my left, or that I have blackheads all over my nose. So often we are caught in our own bubble, our own mindset and we just need a little perspective.
So, if your eyebrows aren't symmetric, embrace it! They're yours. Love them.
